The French Don't Make Mistakes!
by Mayushii
Summary: Based on the events of 6:15, this delightful crackfic will wrap up the entire series in a neat bow in under 2000 words. Destiel near the end.


The French Don't Make Mistakes!

by Mayushii

All copyright materials are property of their respective owners.

A/N: This has been bothering me ever since I watched The French Mistake, but it wasn't until I got halfway through season 7 that I decided enough was enough. I started out writing this with a half-serious idea in mind, but then I got on a roll and it devolved into crackfic. Enjoy?

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><p>The French Don't Make Mistakes!<p>

In Bobby's living room, amid the shattered remains of the window, Sam and Dean stood helplessly as the angry archangel stalked toward Balthazar. Raphael was a fearsome sight to behold, with his/her perfectly-manicured hands clenched into fists and his/her eyes flashing like lightning.

"Raphael, stop!"

The archangel stopped and turned at the sound of a wing beat.

"Cas!" Dean rasped. "Please, _please _tell me…"

Castiel's eyes slid over to the Winchester brothers, and a sly smile appeared on his face. Dean broke into a full grin and Sam's tense shoulders loosened.

"No," Raphael breathed.

"The weapons are with me now," Castiel declared, "and this war is over. Surrender, Raphael."

The archangel screeched like a harpy, but when s/he reappeared barely a foot from Castiel with his/her smitey hand reaching toward him s/he suddenly froze. Raphael's eyes went wide, and then a slice appeared, perfectly bisecting him/her from head to toe.

"Ah, that would be the Judgment of Solomon," Balthazar said with the air of a connoisseur sampling fine wine. "Never actually cut a child in half, by the way, but whatever. Details."

The cut began to shine with white light, and Sam and Dean shut their eyes as Raphael's grace poured out. When they opened their eyes again they saw his/her vessel spread-eagled on the ground, black wings and all. Definitely dead.

Castiel peered down at Raphael, squinting slightly.

"That was…" But Castiel couldn't quite find words for it. Luckily, there were other, more talkative angels in the room to fill in.

"Anticlimactic, yes?" Balthazar commented, his eyes dancing blithely. "Well, that's how these things usually are. This isn't a tv series where everything has to end with a magic ritual or a big epic battle." Castiel did not look impressed. Balthazar rubbed his hands together. "So, ah, Cas? Now that the witch is dead and peace has been restored in the land over the rainbow, do you need me to go back? Or can I just carry on down here?"

Castiel tipped his head. "You can stay down here if you take care of something for me."

"Of course, I live to serve you," Balthazar said jauntily.

"I need you to go to Bobby Singer and heal him."

"When?"

"Now."

"All right then."

Both angels disappeared in a flap of wings. Dean and Sam looked around cluelessly. Castiel reappeared not a minute later, brushing ashes from his overcoat.

"Uh, Cas? What was that about?" Sam asked curiously.

"Just something I should have done months ago," Castiel said cryptically. "Thank you for acting as a diversion while Balthazar and I found the weapons. You did even better than I could have hoped."

"Wait, you were in on this?" Dean yelled. "You knew Balthazar just flung us through the fucking looking-glass with Virgil on our asses?"

"Dean, why are you so angry? Balthazar told you all this, didn't he?" Dean looked ready to explode with fury and Castiel frowned. "He didn't tell you. Well, he was _supposed _to ask for your permission last night and tell you how to contact me from there so I could bring you back when it was all over…"

"Ah, yes, sorry about that," Balthazar said as he reappeared. "I popped back to 1979 for a little—" Balthazar sucked in some air and made a hand gesture that presumably indicated the smoking of illegal substances, "—and I sort of forgot all about the meeting. My bad."

"'_My bad'?_"

"_You almost got us killed!_"

"Yes, yes, and I think we've all learned a valuable lesson about not smoking marijuana the night before the grand finale," Balthazar carelessly brushed off the angry humans. "Cassie, are we done here?"

"Yes. Thank you for your help."

"Anytime, darling."

Balthazar disappeared again, leaving Sam and Dean with nowhere else to glare but at Castiel.

"I thought you were aware of the plan," Castiel reiterated. "I'm sorry."

Dean screwed up his face furiously, but Sam managed to hold his temper.

"Well… We did help you beat Raphael and keep the Apocalypse from starting up all over again," Sam said pragmatically. As always, he was doing his best to find the bright side of things. "And we didn't die, so I guess… Yeah, I'm cool with it. It was an honest mistake."

"No way! I am so _not _cool with this!" Dean griped. But really, that was normal for him.

In a liquor store about a mile away, Bobby Singer was calmly explaining to the clerk that the British guy who had popped out of nowhere and touched Bobby on the forehead had, in fact, been there the whole time (the clerk had just been too busy to notice). Bobby returned home with the appropriate amount of whisky only to discover that Raphael had been defeated and the Apocalypse averted while he was gone. "Oh. Well that's nice," Bobby said sarcastically. "Leave the old man out of all the action, why don't you. And you broke my window! You idjits just get out of my house already!" The next day, while Bobby was resetting the aforementioned window, he received a phone call from Sheriff Jodi Mills. Apparently Rufus Turner had shown up on her doorstep, hastily shaken out a salt line across the threshold, thrown her a shotgun and told her to call for backup. Bobby sighed heavily into the phone, but he was grinning like a fool. Never too old to save beautiful women from flesh-eating ghosts.

Several hundred miles away, in a dank and dirty basement, the Mother of All and her horde of babies had shown up to rescue their tortured kin. When they got there they found the keys to the cages lying unguarded amidst piles and piles of ashes that used to be demons. Eve freed all the monsters from their cages, and satisfied that her children were no longer being kidnapped and tortured, she found a very remote and very superstitious village and established herself as a deity. Aside from her human sacrifices, who were all too happy to throw themselves at her, she never bothered anyone again.

The Campbells carried on hunting, not that anyone gave a crap.

Dean, all missions for this season complete, returned to Lisa's house. He was greeted at the door by a good-looking black dude, who Dean had to assume was the Matt who had taken Lisa out on a date last week. After an awkward hello Dean hastily retreated back to the Impala, where Sam was waiting with a _well who saw that coming _look on his face. "Shut up," Dean mumbled. They drove off and never bothered Lisa and Ben again. (A year later, Lisa would marry Matt and they would live the happy, domestic family life they always wanted.)

A few days after the mortifying incident at Lisa's, while Sam and Dean were driving to a new case in Kentucky, Castiel appeared in the back seat of the Impala. Dean asked what Castiel was going to do now that he was (once again) the new sheriff upstairs, and Castiel blissfully said that he _wasn't_. His brothers and sisters had been unable to grasp the concept of free will, so he had settled on telling them to reassume the roles given them before Lucifer's cage had been opened—which, as it turned out, was all they needed to hear. Content to carry on the tasks they had been given, they no longer needed anyone to "lead" them; periodic check-ins would do just fine.

"So I'm free to do as I like," Castiel concluded.

And what Castiel liked to do was walk the Earth and perform miracles. Just minor miracles, mind you, like curing the blind and patching up holes in the ozone layer—mustn't draw too much attention to himself—but it made him happy in ways he had never felt before. Surprisingly, more often than not, Sam and Dean ran into the miracle-worker while they were "hunting."

Sam would snicker to himself whenever Dean fed Cas this line. Nevermind that Dean now spent only half his time hunting monsters; the rest of his time he was looking for angelic signs so he could meet up with Castiel and say hi. Dean wasn't going to admit it, the jerk, and Sam was too amused to give it away. But one day, Dean would stop acting like a tween and just ask Castiel if he wanted to ride with them.

Sometime later, Sam would meet a nice girl named Amy and take her out on several dates to vegan restaurants. On the third date he would find out she was a kitsune, which explained her fondness for tofu and adzuki beans as well as Sam's instant attraction to her. But since she had never killed or seriously maimed anyone, Dean was okay with her being a monster. She and Sam set up a house together and raised a whole pack of kids with furry fox tails—none of which ate brains, by the way, because they weren't _zombies_. Sam was generally very happy, even if he did spend a fortune on groceries each week.

Dean, for his part, did not feel the need to stay neurotically joined at the hip with his fully-grown brother. Having finally cut the umbilical cord (or whatever you called it when the over-attachment was between siblings), Dean was happy to hunt down monsters with Castiel…who, as it turned out, was the most convenient monster-cleanup service imaginable.

And as for the Impala…well, if the back seat ended up being used almost as often as the front, that was nobody's business.


End file.
